So… this is usually Ruby’s dream blog, but I (her husband) often have dreams as well and need to record more of them. Here goes:
I was working on a project on a college campus where we were integrating all the current assistive technology services (for the blind, deaf, after hours inquiries, any service that required special accessibility considerations) and otherwise centralizing or making interoperable all of the campuses current “access technology” (there is probably an official or common term for this, but I don’t know it off hand…).
The group I was working with was glad to have me and I was happy to be working on the project. The group was planning an informal “discovery” meeting to discuss the scope, mandate, resources and practical expectations of the project. We were to meet in a non-central part of a large campus amphitheater where there was some other event or ceremony going on. That way we could discuss, but still sort of be part of the festivities.
The amphitheater was just a very large set of steps leading away from a gorgeous mid 1800′s American architecture building. The building was four stories tall I think, made of beautifully cut stone and had a large balcony on the second (I think) floor which worked well as a small stage for the amphitheater. The mall between the steps and the building was very large, and the steps themselves probably “seated” a couple thousand people. It was a very large area… and full of people.
My family met me there, and we (the project group) were sitting at the far bottom of the steps across from “stage down left” (not sure that matters… but there was a lot of detail in this dream). We were chatting and I was talking to Beka about the project, and the crowd was listening to a speech or a ceremony or something, and suddenly large owls began to fly from the roof of the building and sort of dive towards the people. The owls were larger than life… maybe standing 4 feet high when perched, and were distinctly speckled black and white such that you would not say that they were gray, but “black and white.”
The crowd was absolutely terrified. People on the balcony began to jump to the walkway below… risking (and losing) their lives to avoid the owls. My kids looked at me, alarmed because of the response of the crowd, which was in a panicked stampede. The size and amazing number of the owls was a little disconcerting but I did not understand the fear of the crowd and told the kids to just sit still, “They are just owls, there is nothing to fear.”
Several owls began to land near us, and I think five or seven eventually landed, stood side by side about five feet in front of us and just looked at us. Oddly turning and cocking their heads, looking away, and then back again, etc. As we observed the owls, the crowd completely cleared out. The area was littered with all kinds of trash, a number of dead bodies and other detritus like broken decorations, etc. I saw three or so other groups of people far off, who, like us had just sort of stayed and watched in amazement.
At this point I noticed that all over the steps were black and white goats, also slightly larger than life and distinctly black and white. They were (or already had been) entering the area from the back… from the tops of the stairs and from the sides of the walkway, etc. They all seemed like bucks (males) to me… which I thought odd. They too were harmless, but evidently had been another source of great fear for the crowd. A group of maybe five goats also lined up to our right to observe us.
The after effect was that this whole area had become, in a moment’s time, the pervue of goats and owls… as if they owned it or possessed it in some way. I remember that there were still a very few people in the area (maybe 20 people total, including my family of seven!) and that otherwise it was alive with these many, many goats and owls. It was truly spectacular. The images are still incredibly vivid in my mind.
OK… I am not sure how the dream flowed here, but back a few moment to the point where the owls began to “flow” over the top of the building and down among the people: I asked my wife for the camera to take a picture… it was so amazing! She handed me the camera body, but it did not have a lens attached and I cried out in exasperation then opened the camera bag, grabbed a lens, took off the body dust cap and attempted to attach the lens with no luck. There was this intricately formed molded plastic ring that had broken or come loose or something, and I could not attach the lens. In exasperation I put down the lens and began to fiddle with this ring, attempting to get it to fit.
Suddenly there was this man standing… somewhere… like in space, or in time, or something… apparently toward the middle of the steps, but not really even in our reality… anyway… I am not sure he was a man, and he did not seem to be an angel or anything… I just don’t know. When he appeared he looked directly at me and said in a very emphatic and almost pleading voice, “It is the end of time.” I felt like that meant I should do something… or fix something… I didn’t know and sheepishly looked down at my camera body and the ring and asked cluelessly (don’t laugh), “Is it my camera?”
At this point all the owls and all the goats that were standing in front of and to the right of us looked intently at me as well, and at that moment everything began to age fantastically around us. The sky turned a golden yellow, the building in front of us became a ruin in an instant, the steps became crumbled and decayed like the Pyramids, and even the camera in my hands became an old carved box, and the intricately formed plastic ring became a jade carved token of some sort. As I looked it was obvious now how the jade token fit easily into the carved box, and I dropped it in place.
The dream immediately changed.
We (my family and I) were taking a leisurely walk up a road that led away from that same campus into a residential district. “Time had not ended” (or whatever) yet, and it was a beautiful day. Again my wife and I were talking about the assistive technologies project in an offhand sort of way, and I hear a sort of Hollywood / Lord of the Rings / booming message-from-on-high type quote along these lines, “and the beasts rose up from the sea.” Immediately I saw all kinds of weird creatures coming up out of the ocean and in a quite perfect but paradoxically chaotic manner, destroying all the human infrastructure so as to make living in any modern context impossible.
I guess that was a flash to a bird’s eye view, because the next thing I knew, we were (in the ongoing destruction) walking past an oddly ancient addition to a Walgreens or some other modern drug store type building. I was brought to an ancient adobe wall and saw a monstrous bird of some sort (which was one of the great beasts which rose from the sea) clutch a drawer that was in the wall and shatter it. There was nothing in the drawer, but I looked around and noticed a blond haired, “white” man and a Native American woman working on the area as if they were archaeologists or treasure hunters or both…
I was directed (by some unseen force / intuition) around the corner and saw that the destruction which the bird had caused had opened an unknown berth in another wall. I reached in and pulled out an old book. The Native American woman had been looking in that area and I reached right over her to get the book… but she seemed oblivious to me, the berth and the book. It was not some ancient leather bound tome with a golden lock or anything. It appeared to have been printed between 1950 and 1980, it was paper bound and in “poor” condition but still quite readable.
That was it.
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I know this sounds like a “too much Marinara” dream… but it seemed imperative that I should record it. Maybe for my own recollection… maybe for someone else. In any case, there were many representations that seemed quite plain to me, but I am still praying about the considering the dream as a whole.